Posts tagged "Illustrator CC"

Creative Cloud Libraries, introduced in the October 2014 release of Illustrator CC, lets you have your favorite assets available to you and your creative team anywhere. With CC Libraries in Illustrator, you can create and share artwork, colors, text styles, images and more and then access them across Photoshop CC and InDesign CC, as well as mobile apps like Illustrator Draw and Adobe Shape, or a web browser — anywhere you can log into Creative Cloud.

In December 2014, CC Libraries was updated so libraries can be shared with anyone with a Creative Cloud account, making it easy to collaborate and maintain consistency in your designs. Also added was the ability to copy and share items across libraries.

If you’ve not checked out CC Libraries, the feature is found in the Libraries panel (Window > Libraries).

You can find out more about working with CC Libraries from the tutorials and help docs below.

Creative Cloud Libraries let you browse, manage and access your favorite creative assets — colors, type styles, graphics, brushes, and more — in new libraries that are available in Illustrator, Photoshop, and mobile apps like Sketch and Draw. Capture colors shapes, and create custom brushes with new Color CC, Shape CC and Brush CC mobile apps, save them to Libraries and have them at your fingertips. Libraries sync to Creative Cloud so you always have the files you need, right when you need them. Learn more >

Touch workspaceThe Touch workspace lets you access the full power of Illustrator on the go using a new workspace optimized for your Microsoft Surface Pro 3 or any Windows 8 tablet. Get essential tools for drawing and editing with a pen and your finger in a touch environment, including French curves that you can scale, move, and trace. At any time you can switch back to one of the “classic” Illustrator workspaces to access the full range of Illustrator tools and controls. It’s Illustrator you can take with you wherever you go. See how it works ›

Curvature toolThe Curvature tool lets you draw refined curves and straight lines quickly and visually. Click once with the Curvature tool to place points and see the curve flex around them dynamically, or double-click or alt/opt click to create corner points for straight lines. Edit using the same tool — no need to hassle with anchor points and handles. But if you want the full control of working with anchors and handles, just edit your paths with any of Illustrator’s path editing tools. See how it works ›

Join toolWith the Join tool you can easily join paths that cross, overlap, or have open ends — and simultaneously trim unwanted segments — without affecting the original path trajectories. And it’s all accomplished with intuitive scrubbing gestures. See how it works ›

Area-type auto-sizingWith Area-type auto-sizing you can say goodbye to overset text boxes. Now, area type frames resize automatically as you add, delete, or edit text. A double-click on the text frame widget toggles auto-sizing on and off.

Integration with the Illustrator family of mobile appsIntegration with the Illustrator family of mobile apps lets you seamlessly bring in artwork from Illustrator Draw and Illustrator Line and enhance it using the full range of Illustrator tools for a complete mobile-to-desktop design workflow. See how it works ›

Capture inspiration anywhereCapture inspiration anywhere — Create custom brushes, graphics, and colors using the Brush CC, Shape CC, and Color CC mobile apps, and then easily bring them into Illustrator via Creative Cloud Libraries to incorporate them into your designs. See how it works ›

When Illustrator was first launched in 1987, it was a revolution. For the first time, designers had the freedom to create complex art on screen, thanks to Illustrator and the Macintosh computer. The traditional tools wielded by designers and illustrators — pencils, inking pens, French curves, and rulers — could now by replaced by keyboard, mouse and Illustrator!

The Adobe Illustrator story

With the move from traditional to digital tools, design became less of a struggle: Production is less of a barrier. Making changes doesn’t mean starting from scratch and redoing it all. Sending designs to a client only takes the click of a button. The same design that’s used for a magazine ad can be scaled up to billboard size without loss of quality.

But design is also less tactile now. You cannot wield a brush or touch your canvas. You cannot immerse yourself in the design process in the same way as before the computer. The computer has become both the design and the production tool. Mice and keyboards are now the primary interface; you cannot use your hands and fingers in a direct way.

Adobe believes that design, while a professional art which needs rigor and practice, should also be an exhilarating experience. One should be able to dive into it whenever inspiration strikes. It shouldn’t matter if you are in your design studio in front of your desktop computer or in a park under the sun with a portable device in your hand.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3: a powerful, portable device

We are excited about the touch-based 2-in-1 computer revolution gaining momentum around us. And we thought, what could be a better use of touch screens than letting designers push through the boundaries of mouse and keyboard and indulge physically in their creative work. Illustrator has been experimenting with touch for some time now; the Touch Type and Free Transform tools, along with support for the touch gestures that surfaced in Illustrator CC, were the result of a long-term vision to make Illustrator touch friendly.

Touch tools in Illustrator

However, Illustrator is not just a set of tools, but a complete design environment. To make Illustrator “touch friendly” meant more than enabling its tools for touch. It requires a complete touch-friendly design experience. Our customers must be able to complete their designs on touch devices without having to rely on a mouse or a touchpad. This also means packaging the overwhelmingly rich user interface of Illustrator into a simple and contextual workspace so it fits onto a screen portable enough to be carried around. And all of this without losing the richness and power that Illustrator offers today.

We wanted Illustrator to be simple yet powerful, touch friendly yet precise, and to fit on a portable device without losing any of its richness. This problem statement has formed the basis of all our touch efforts in Illustrator.

The solution is a touch workspace.

The Illustrator team has been working on a Touch Workspace, or TWS. It’s a special workspace in Illustrator that provides touch friendliness on a touch-enabled device, whether it’s stylus support, pressure sensitivity or cool gestures to manipulate art and canvas. It will also have simplified UI which must fit beautifully on a portable device.

TWS is a workspace within Illustrator itself, so we are sure that we are not compromising on the power or richness of Illustrator. Beneath a simple and playful touch-friendly interface, it’s the same Illustrator that we all trust. And, since it is a workspace, our customers are able to switch to and from it without having to close or save their documents.

Yuka Uemura, a graphic designer from Queensland, Australia shared a vector portrait she created of Kaky, a Kelpie cross Border Collie puppy.

The Illustrator social team posted it on the Illustrator Facebook channel, and the audience loved it just as much as we did.

Yuka was kind enough to take the time and effort to develop a tutorial of the techniques she used to create this beautiful, highly detailed vector portrait of Kaky. And we are super excited to share it with you.